“Buddies”

In the spring of 1993 a young neighbor boy came to my door carrying two puppies. he explained that he had found a litter of puppies abandoned along the South Platte river. When he took the little dogs home, his father told him that he would have to find homes for them or he “would take car of it”; the boy told me that I didn’t want to know what that meant. So, with big tears in his eyes, he politely asked me to please give one of them a home. Even though I already had three dogs, I agreed. He told me that the puppy I had chosen was named “Bart”. When he left, I discovered that Bart should have been “Roberta” so her official name was changed; I did continue to call her Bart for short. As Bart grew, she became friends with our saddle horse “Pet”. In the beginning I thought Bart was chansing livestock, which in our part of the country is a capital offense, but as I watched, it became apparent that the two animals were playing. First the dog would chase the horse – then it was Pet’s turn to do the chasing. Sometimes the two would simply race around the pasture side-by-side. In the years that followed they became more than just friends – they became “Buddies”.